Age of Vikings and Fanatics: Total war

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hi great idea.. but why have you listed the Danes as a chatholic nation as I recall we didn't become real chatholic until 1099!

Sorry for that mistake, they'll be pagan in the mod

[Rodion Romanovich]

After some thinking I've come to the conclusion that I should probably try to add it so that factions can get their religion converted at different dates. Once I've fixed the campaign map and some of the basic unit editing I'll start looking at such features that would definitely add a unique flavor to this mod. But I'm eager to get a campaign map and some test units up quickly, I think it's easier to experiment once those basic details have been fixed.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Here's a temporary province and city list, The Apostate. In case you confirm your interest in helping with this mod, this is the first project I need help with from a historian. These things will be easy to change later even if I start coding with incorrect info here, but it'd be great to have an as accurate list as possible to start from when modelling the campaign map, to save work time etc.

Many of these cities were officially founded later than 843 but one can in some cases assume there were minor villages/towns in the area before that, however, other cities in these areas might have been of greater importance at the time, so the ones I've picked will probably in many cases have to be changed. I've also used much modern spelling for these names, I think it'd be better to use the old spelling if it's possible to find the old, local spelling and names for all these provinces and cities. I've written the list in this format: province_name - settlement_name, comments. We'll also need to fill the list with data regarding whether each settlement will be village,town, large town, city or large city from the start of the mod, as well as what resources and farm level the province should have.

NORWAY AREA
* Central Norway - Kaupang (position close to Oslo but further down the fiord)
* Trondelag - Trondheim
* Lofoten (both islands and part of the mainland, which is where Narvik is situated) - Narvik
* Northern Norway - Tromso
* Hafrsfjord (rebels) - Nord-Jaeren / Stafangr
* Finnmark (rebels) - Kirkenes, situated next to Barents Sea and modern Russian border

SWEDEN AREA
* Roslagen - Sigtuna
* Upland - Upsala
* Ostgothia - Visingso - BETTER CITY NEEDED (visingso is a small island in the lake in that province, whose southern part was used as a fortress - therefore not exactly a good settlement for this province)
* Waestrogothia - Skara
* Gotland - Visby - VISBY NOT BUILT AS AN OFFICIAL CITY AT THIS TIME, but one can assume there was a village/town there. It'll be a province poor in farming and trade of course, as it historically was until the time before the Hansa/Hanse (spelling?).
* Smaland - Kalmar - BETTER CITY NEEDED. THE PROVINCE IS HERE AS FOR STRATEGIC REASONS, TERRAIN IS HEAVY FOREST ETC. because this piece of land shouldn't be part of the Swedish holdings from start. The province name is also a modern one, a better suited old one would be appreciated.
* Samland? - ? - ALSO HERE FOR STRATEGIC REASONS. Any city or village name can do, preferably a city far to the north. This is the northernmost part of
* Halland? - ? - BETTER NAME NEEDED FOR THIS PROVINCE AT THIS TIME. I was considering to use Loedoese (Lödöse) as settlement for the province - at this time. I believe it was a minor trading center in Sweden through the rivers leading from Vaenern (Vänern), so it has stratetic significance even though it's importance might have been reduced later, when the leaders of Waestrogothia strengthened their control over the coastal area south of it and got better ways to the sea from Vaenern?

DENMARK AREA
* Skane - Lund - DON'T SURE IF SKANE WAS CALLED SKANE BACK THEN, AND THE CITY LUND WAS FOUNDED LATER, but one can assume there was at least some sort of settlement in the area. Better, older name for the settlement and province probably needed. Perhaps Lund wasn't among the more significant cities in this area either, so I'm open to better suggestions for settlement name for this province, that constitutes the southernmost part of modern Sweden.
* Zealland - Roskilde (the dot on the map is correctly located now)
* Holseta Land / or Nordfriesland? (in modern Schleswig-Holstein area) - Haithabu / or Hedeby, was the largest nordic city of the viking age according to my sources, therefore it should be a quite big city and not just a town or village.
* North Jutland (northern Jutland) - Viborg - better province perhaps name needed. Settlement will perhaps have good fortifications from start.
* East Jutland (better province name needed, East Jutland is an incorrect representation) - Jelling/Jellinge (the city dot is now correctly located)

ICELAND AREA
* Iceland - Reyjkjavik (village/town) - only one province, so name Iceland is given. However I'm not sure about existence of Reyjkjavik at that time, or the spelling for that part...

IRELAND AREA
I was planning to use the province names below, which are the same as the parts of modern Ireland. I believe it's the best way to split up Éire, because the borders of the viking-conquered areas were almost the same. For example Thorgest will own Ulster and Connacht from start. I'm not entirely sure about the cities though, especially not for Ulster, where I haven't even made any suggestion.
* Ulster - ?, I have no idea what city we should use for this province?
* Connacht (western Ireland) - Limerick (town)
* Leinster (southeast Ireland) - Dubh Linn (town)
* Munster (southwest Ireland) - Cork (village/town)

FINLAND AND BALTICUM AREA
* Karelia (west of Lake Ladoga but not blocking Baltic port for Novgorod province) - ?, I think Finland should be split up into more than one province because of the viking focus of the mod. This will of course be compensated by very low farm income etc. for each of the provinces - conquering them will probably require almost as much garrison cost as it'll contribute to economy.
* Finland (rest of Finland, pretty much) - ?, better name perhaps needed for province. Settlement needed.
* Soumissalmi - ? (village) Where does this place lie? I just heard the name, not sure where it is though. Is this a part of northern Finland? For strategical reasons I'd like to have Finland represented by 3 provinces - Finland, Karelia (with corrections if historical data contradicts these names etc.) and one more to the north.
* Livonia (Estonia and Latvia area) - ?, settlement name needed.
* Lithuania - ?, settlement name needed.

RUSSIA AREA
* Novgorod - Novgorod
* Kiev - Kiev
* Smolensk - ? WHERE PUT SMOLENSK? ACCORDING TO MY SOURCES BULGARIANS AIDED SMOLYANS VS THE BYZANTINES, aren't smolyans the people of Smolensk? Shouldn't that mean Smolensk is close to Bulgaria area? But M:TW map suggests they're further to the north... Help needed!
* Volga-Bulgaria - ?, settlement name needed
* Muscovy - not sure about this one, should it be included? Perhaps better provinces for steppes and Russia area should be used.
* 1 or 2 provinces probably needed between Kiev and Constantinople for Pechenegs and other tribes that had some significance in the area. I can't come up with a good province plan for that area though. Also see East Europe Area below...

STEPPES AREA
* The Crimea - ?, city needed
* Khazar - ?, city needed
* Georgia - ?, city needed
* ...other steppe provinces not planned, needs to be done. Khazar should own several provinces, not just one, so a good, historically relevant splitting up of the area into 1-3 provinces would be good

EAST EUROPE AREA
Many of these need an appropriate city (not sure about provinces either - especially not the Greece area):
* Volhynia? - ?
* Poland - ?
* Prussia? - ?
* Wallachia
* Carpathia
* Bulgaria - Bolgar
* Moldavia
* Macedonia - ?
* Athens? - ?
* Pelopponesse? - ?
* Croatia - ?
* Serbia - ?
* Hungaria? - ? - probably not good province name as hungarians were magyars then, or?
* Austria - ? also probably not very good...
* Bohemia - ?

GERMANY AREA
Same here (not sure about provinces either):
* Saxony - ?
* Pomerania?
* Bavaria - ?
* Swabia? - ?
* Tyrolia? - ?
* Switzerland? - ?
* Friesland? - ?
* Franconia? - ?

WALES AREA
Not very thoroughly researched, but here's a list of some provinces chosen from the M:TW-VI map. A total of 3 provinces is IMO perfect for the game representation of this area, but I don't know if I chose the best 3 provinces:
* Pouis? - ?
* Clwyd? - ?
* Guent? - ?

SCOTLAND AREA
Same as for Wales here...
* Dal riada (western Scotland) - ?
* Moray (northern Scotland) - ?
* Athfotla (middle Scotland) - ?
* Cyil (soutwest Scotland) - ?
* Fib (southern Scotland) - ?

ENGLAND AREA
Same as for Wales here, although I've slightly more control here I think (ahem... hope... ):
* Northumbria - ? (northwest England)
* Beornice - York (east England)
* Mierce/Mercia - ? (middle England)
* West seaxe - ?
* Suth seaxe (southeast of West seaxe)
* Middle seaxe (below Mercia)
* East engle (east England south of Beornice)
* Cerniu - southwest England (is this one supposed to be Welsh-owned from start by the way?)

SPAIN AREA
these need to be checked too. Should Catalonia be a separate province or should I expand Aragon slightly? Which of the cities should I choose for Leon? The latter would be more strategically fun due to it's position at the coast, far away from the other provinces. Which provinces should be owned by Al Andalus and which by Kingdom of Asturia from start?
* Navarre - Pamplona (city)
* Leon - Leon, or Santiago de Compostela
* Portugal - Lissabon
* Andalusia - Sevilla
* Cordoba - Cordoba
* Granada - Granada
* Valencia - Valencia
* Castile - Toledo
* Catalonia - Barcelona
* Aragon - Zaragosa

FRANCE AREA
These provinces need so thorough checking... I did this way too quickly...
* Aquitaine - Bordeaux?
* ? - Orleans
* Ile de France? - Paris?
* Champagne - ?
* Burgundy - ?
* Normandy - ? I wouldn't mind having Normandy represented by more than 1 province in order to strengthen the normans somewhat, but I don't know what those provinces would be called then.
* Britanny - ?
* Flanders - ?
* Alsace - ?
* Toulouse - ?
* Provence - ?
* Lorraine? - ?

ITALY AREA
* Genoa - Genoa
* Venice - Venice
* Milan - Milan
* Tuscany - Florence
* Naples - (byzantine-controlled I believe) Naples
* Sicily (rebels) - Palermo?
* Papal states - Rome (owned by Pope)

NORTH AFRICA AREA
* Morocco - ?
* Algeria - ?
* Tunisia - Tunis
* Sahara - ?
* Libya - Tripoli
* Cyrenaica? - Barka
* Western Egypt - Siwa?
* Nile delta - Alexandria (large city)
* Egypt - Cairo (city) - better name probably needed. Entire Egypt area needs to be fixed, I think.
* Nubia/Abyssinia - ? (town) - although the map won't reach down to Nubia it'd probably be best to have a nubia province. Why? Because in order to get Nubia I'd have to move southern edge of map down and add LOADS of useless desert to the west. By having a fake Nubia a little too far north you can still make them affect the gameplay. However your historical expertise will have to decide if they're important enough to make it worth including them this way. My intention for the province was to have it as only recruit zone for abyssinian guard and/or nubian mercenaries and normally recruitable troops.
* Sinai - ?

ASIA MINOR AREA
* Constantinople - Constantinople (large city)
...the rest not planned yet... Georgia planned though (see steppes provinces). Need help here in order to know which provinces and cities were most important at the time.

MIDDLE EAST AREA
? Not planned yet, but Jerusalem and Antioch will be included. Baghdad also, of course. Province Arabia should have either Mecka or Medina as city, probably Medina unless we want to move the city slightly more north than it in reality is - something I personally don't mind for this or for Nubia, but you might not and besides if we can choose Medina and have it in correct position that's probably better. It also comes down to which city would have most significance at the time. Mecka was of course of religious importance but how were the two in terms of economical/strategical importance? Which one should be on the map to represent Arabia? I believe Mosul should also be one of the cities included in this area. Damascus too.

MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS
* Baliares - ?
* Corsica - ?
* Sardinia - ?
* Siciliy - ?
* Cyprus - ?
* Crete - ?
* Rhodes - ?

This counts for a total of 123 provinces, plus approximately 20 in the areas that have not yet been planned.

I'll below post the map so we can discuss redrawing of some borders and you can download and draw notes on it in Paint or something to aid the discussion of these provinces and settlements. Put a black pixel for a settlement and a white pixel for a port. A province can be marked by either a red line around the province or by coloring the entire province in a unique color, then I'll understand what you mean.

[skeletor]

I ton't think you shuld use Oslo as a city. At startingdate, it was only a village (Oslo is celebrating it's 1000nd year this year. The largest city in this area war Kaupang (located a bit further down the fjord, on the west shore).
Kaupang was presumably the largest tradecenter in Norway before 1000ad.

google Kaupang

-Skel-

[Rodion Romanovich]

Ok, thanks, I've edited it now.

[Meneldil]

These maps might help you :



http://www.euratlas.com/big/big0800.htm#%20here

[Rodion Romanovich]

These maps might help you :

Yes, thanks a lot. I'll edit the province list above when I've had a closer look at the maps and decided how they would best be converted into R:TW engine provinces.

NEWS UPDATE May 11th 2005
===========
Campaign map screenshots postponed. Reasons: 1. Looks like there are more people interested in joining the mod team. This requires some time for planning and coordinating at this stage which takes time from the modding, but in the long term this will be returned by higher quality and faster progress once the planning and coordinating has been done. 2. Doing more detailed planning of provinces before starting will probably save time later, which means the mod as a whole will be complete faster. However this won't prevent me from working on the campaign map terrain, climates etc. so I'll spend some time fixing that while the planning and coordination goes on.

[Lasias Wenson]

The danish cities you listed weren't were important in the 9th century.

On Zealland, Copenhagen was a very small town. The city Roskilde (situated were you placed Copenhagen) was very important as it was the capital of Zealland before Denmark were united.

In North Jutland, Viborg was the most important town, it was another danish capital before Denmark was united. I think it actually was one of the danish fortifications.

Odense (my home town) was very small at this time and should not be a province capital, instead it should be Jelling (english) or Jellinge (danish) as it was the capital of the united Denmark. It was positioned were you placed Odense on your map (Odense really lies on the island in the middel of Denmark).

I don't think you should include an East Jutland as there was no really important town there.